A/N: Once again I apologize for the delay in this. School started again so I'm once again consumed by extremely large, overly confusing textbooks. I'll try to update again sometime this weekend.

Skin Deep

Chapter 11: Truth and Lies

A loud moan.

One that didn't sound like Bella.

Fuck no.

It couldn't be.

I stood there, hand clamped around the door handle. My body was frozen. My mind was still. And yet my heart raced uncontrollably in my chest. Blood was pumping through me at a frightening speed.

I knew what she was doing in there. That's what that gnawing feeling was the entire time I was at my meeting. It was a second sense of sorts telling me that something was desperately wrong in my world. It clung to my senses and I should have listened to that voice in the back of my head screaming at me when I saw Bella smile at that girl at dinner.

I had given her everything I had to give and yet I still apparently wasn't good enough for her. I had let myself be consumed by her. Always her. Only her.

And yet she had still done this.

Well, at least I think she was doing this. All I had to go on was a muffled moan that sounded like someone not Bella coming from inside my room. For all I knew she was watching porn really loudly and I was completely jumping to rash conclusions without thinking.

I should at least find out which part of my screaming mind was right.

Right?

I took one last deep breath and steeled myself for what I could possibly find when I opened the door. From the worst scenarios all the way up through the best ones. From her being with another girl or two even all the way to my mind completely making up the noise I'd heard.

I could do this. I could handle it.

Couldn't I?

I finally turned the handle and pushed on the door lightly, swinging it open. My eyes clenched shut and I wasn't sure I would be able to open them to face whatever was in front of me.

And I heard it again.

That groan and gasp that wasn't Bella. And definitely wasn't on any television or computer.

My eyes flew open and my heart sank and my stomach churned.

All my worst fears were realized in that moment.

My life changed.

Everything I thought I knew once again flew out the window.

The girl from the cookie bar was naked and flat on the bed, my bed, with her legs over Bella's shoulders. Her head was back and her moans echoed off the walls of the room. Bella was just as naked, her little water and flame tattoo mocked me as she moved her hips in rhythm with her tongue that was thrusting into the girl's pussy.

I should have run out of the room crying.

I should have broken down and gone crazy at the sight.

God, I should have turned into Sarah and curled up in the fetal position on my old bed in my old room.

But I was surprisingly … pissed.

Who was this girl to think she could come in here and fuck Bella? My girlfriend! My world! My everything!

My jaw clenched and every cell in my body lit with the flames of enough anger to burn down a whole city.

That bitch, whoever she was, was doing to die. I was going to claw her eyes out and beat her to a bloody pulp before I threw her out of MY room and took back what I had earned. I had put up with so much shit to be where I was and I was damned if I was going to sit back and take this lying down.

I flew at them before I knew what I was doing, grabbing a handful of Bella's thick brown hair and yanking her face away from the slut's body. Her eyes focused on me and I thought I actually read fear in them for a split second.

"Fuck!" I screamed and pushed Bella back so she stumbled and fell down on her butt on the floor.

I turned to the other girl and my hands were around her throat ridiculously fast.

My fingers were too little to fit all the way around so I curled them as far as I could go and thrashed her head back into the mattress.

"You!" thump "fucking!" thump "shank!" thump "bitch!" I yelled and poured all my anger into doing my worst for this dumb bitch who had stolen everything from me.

I had done nothing but be the best person I could be and she had invaded everything, whoever she was. I didn't even know her name and honestly, I didn't care that much. All I knew was she was naked and wet and just fucking ruining everything.

"Alice!" Bella screamed and tried to pull me off of the girl.

I took one of my hands from the girl and pushed Bella back again, surprisingly hard and once again knocking her off balance.

I grabbed the whore by the roots of her hair and lifted her off my bed, pushing her towards the door.

"You don't fucking deserve to be here! I earned this! I submitted! Get the fuck out!" I screamed frantically.

With one hand still buried deep in her mousy, ugly hair I opened the door and pushed her out into the hallway, still naked as the moment I found her. I didn't care that people were likely to see her that way. She could walk across fucking campus for all I cared. She had no right to be in my room with my girlfriend on my bed getting serviced by my tongue that I'd earned.

"She's fucking naked, Alice!" Bella screeched from behind me and I whirled around in my spot, my body practically shaking with rage.

"Don't you fucking start with me! I've had about enough of this shit from you. I put up with the glares. I put up with the dominance thing you have. I put up with your bras under the bed and your paper and your fucking candles and all that shit because I want to be with you. I want to know you and figure you out and get inside your head and know what makes you tick. I want to know about your family and every fucking one of the girls, no matter if it kills me a little inside with each one. I want to know why you cry when we fuck and what the fuck is so wrong with me that you have to find some dirty whore to fuck on MY bed while I'm at a fucking group meeting!" I screamed at her and waved my hands around like a banshee.

I was panting and huffing and just fucking pissed off more than I'd ever been in my life.

She took a few steps back from me, her eyes filling with tears and her face getting red. I could still see the lingering remnants of that slut's cum on her face and I wanted to slap it off. I wanted all traces of that piece of ass gone from my life.

"Alice!" she half whimpered, half croaked.

"What?!" I screamed.

She shook her head and it only served to get me madder. She curled her arm around her chest and hugged tight, almost like she was trying to hold herself together. This pushed her breasts up and though I normally would have enjoyed the sight, there was something different about her now. She'd changed in my eyes and though I could feel the instinctive wetness between my legs, my head wasn't in it this time.

I leaned down to the floor and swiped at whatever shirt I could find first, throwing it at Bella when I found a long black one.

"Put this the fuck on. I can't stand to look at you like that right now," I growled and watched her struggle to cover herself up fast enough.

She was practically quaking how hard she was shivering, shaking. Her body was in the middle of an earthquake and her fingers tugged and smoothed over the wrinkled material again and again while I struggled to compose myself and reign in my uncharacteristic explosion of anger, not that she probably didn't deserve much more.

I was just … pissed.

She had the nerve to do this to me when all I'd ever done was try. Try to be perfect. Try to be more. Try to be enough. Try to be the one who could make everything right.

"Don't you fucking get it?" I yelled finally, still too angry to do anything but explode again and again.

"What?! Get what?" Bella yelled right back.

"I thought I was enough for you! I thought we had something beyond your normal fuck and run. Yes, I know all about that shit, Bella. Jessica told me all about that. And Sarah. And how you ruined her and made her cry and turned her insane. Don't think for one second I went into this not knowing what you did to girls before me. And yet it didn't matter. I pushed all that shit aside and wanted to find out for myself. It couldn't all possibly be true and yet here we are … you fucking another girl on my bed with the sheets I make you cum on again and again and you don't even fucking get it!"

God, I just wanted to throttle her! To knock some sense into that dense skull of hers that was apparently incapable of understanding anything outside of her own little world. A world where apparently I wasn't important enough not to cheat on … in my bed … right on top of my pillow.

"It's not like that, Alice!" Bella hollered at me and stalked over to her little bookshelf with her candles and matches. I watched as she lit all of them and slowly set the matches back down.

She held onto the side of the bookshelf almost to steady herself and I could feel my hands start to shake.

"It's not like that at all," she muttered so low I almost didn't pick up on it.

"So fucking tell me. Tell me why I'm not good enough. And why you're so fucked up. And what I can do to get in there where you obviously don't want me," I seethed.

Bella spun around and her eyes were alight with passion I had never seen there before. Unidentified and unreliable passion.

"Maybe I do want you in! Maybe I want you in so fucking bad that it's killing me that I can't let you in. But maybe I'm fucking scared that you'll hate what you see. Have you ever really thought about that?" she spat out. "Have you for one second considered how screwed up my head might be?"

Her hands started shaking and something inside of me broke. My breath caught in my throat and I thought I might pass out.

I had indeed considered all of these things she was throwing at me. I'd considered them, mulled them over, chewed on them. God, I'd speculated beyond anything at what could have possibly happened to Bell that she would be so ridiculously messed up as she was. There was definitely something in her past that she wasn't willing to divulge before.

Maybe now was the right time.

"Of course I have," I whispered and her head that had dropped shot up.

"Then why are you still here?" she asked, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Because I want to know everything. I want to be let in. I want in that head regardless of what you think is in there. Just let me see you without all the pretense and crap and mindfuck. Tell me about you, and not you and the world sees you."

Bella took a step towards the bed and her eyes swept over the mussed up sheets. She dragged her hand across the fabric, the paleness of her skin standing out against the black material. A study of contrasts.

Her hands were still shaking.

"You won't like what you see," she whispered. "I'm too fucked up. Too far gone."

"Let me be the judge of that," I sighed.

She grabbed at the sheets, fisting them between her fingers and tugging angrily.

"You make it sound so easy. Like me spilling my guts to you and letting you fucking psychoanalyze me is going to solve all of my problems. Like somehow getting all this crap out of my head is going to turn me into not a monster. I'm a horrible person, Alice. You just need to fucking realize that. I'm not going to change. This is me. No fancy fucking frills. No daises. No cuddly puppies. It's rough and harsh and goddamit, I hurt people. I break their hearts and move on to the next fuck before I have time to really realize what I've done. It's just how it is. There's no changing," she gritted out.

The air hung around us, heavy with musk and anger and fear. I sensed it rolling off of her in waves.

She was terrified. Petrified. So scared of letting me in.

What could be in there?

What was in that black void of her past that would make her think like this?

Bella flexed her hand and her knuckles went even whiter against the black of the bedsheets.

"Just tell me," I whispered into the still silence of the room.

"Fine! I'll fucking tell you. I'll tell you how I got my fucking heart broken by the first girl I ever fell in love with. How I didn't know I was even gay until her. How my life changed the minute I laid eyes on her everything I thought I knew flew out the window. She was so fucking perfect. Sweet and perfect and just her. Nothing compared to her at all. Elizabeth. That was her name. God, I loved her so much. And I thought she loved me. She said it often enough for me to believe it. We were perfect. Fucking perfect. Then one day we're on a walk and she just drops this fucking bombshell that she doesn't love me. That she never loved me. That she was fucking leaving. That she wasn't good enough for me. That she could never love me no matter how hard she tried."

Bella's words were punctuated with half sobs, half sighs.

My brain was telling me to do something, but my body was frozen in its spot. It felt like my blood had stopped flowing through my veins.

There it was.

That was the truth of the matter.

The heart of it all.

She'd been loved and left.

I was right when I said she had abandonment issues.

She had more than issues though. She had a whole subscription.

This Elizabeth had broken her. Shattered her into tiny pieces that I'm not sure were back together. There was a possibility that they might never be back together, the more I thought about it.

The idea that Bella would always be like this pained me. The cycles. The power struggle. The need for dominance. The need to assert her control over a situation.

The need to take back what she had had taken from her.

Her heart.

"Sarah," I whispered.

"Sarah was an unfortunate accident. I let my guard down. I let her in. And it fucking hurt. It ripped me apart and I had to get out before she hurt me. They all hurt me. That's what life is, Alice. One long string of hurtful moments mashed together in a line. Another day of pain before I can fuck it away into those few blissful moments where it doesn't hurt. It's always there in the back of my head, taunting me. The look on Elizabeth's face when she said she didn't love me. When she said she didn't want me. That she had never wanted me. God, all I was a toy to her. Some evil like idea of a joke. Take me in, change everything I'd ever know, than toss me aside like a used goddamn tissue. God, it fucking hurt like hell," she grimaced. "It still hurts like hell."

The moment was silent again, too large for either of us to break it.

She'd poured her soul out to me.

I could see the sorrow and hurt behind her eyes. Behind the very truth she spoke.

Bella had been hurting for a long time and there didn't seem to be any end to it.

I wished I could make it better.

But something told me I couldn't.

"It will get better," I lied.

"No, it fucking won't. It's there with every breath I take. Every heartbeat. Every fuck. It lingers and grips me and holds on fucking tight when all I want to do is make it go away. She fucking ruined me. I can't let anybody in now because there's nothing left to be let in on. She fucking broke my heart and my soul and my body. I'm used and broken and not worth your time, Alice."

Tears were flowing from her eyes and I desperately wished I could reach out and wipe them away, but my anger was coming back again strangely.

She thought she was so broken beyond repair. She didn't think anybody would ever fix her. That nothing in the world could stop what had already happened.

And that pissed me off.

I somehow still wasn't good enough. I wasn't even good enough to be worth a shot.

"And what makes you the right person to decide that? Why can't I be the one to decide how I spend my time?" I spat out angrily at her.

"You don't fucking understand me!" Bella came back at me with.

"I don't understand you because you don't let me understand you!"

Bella began to pace in front of me, her hands running through her hair and pulling on the messy locks. She looked so disheveled my heart broke for her. Like she was on her last thread of sanity and I was witnessing the complete and total break down of all that was Bella in front of my eyes.

I had thought I could be everything for her. Take all her fears away. Make her better. Make her whole. That together we could build something bigger and better than both of us.

And yet we were locked in this circular argument. We couldn't move forward unless Bella let me in. And Bella wouldn't let me in unless she something changed in her, which by the looks of it wasn't happening any time soon.

The million dollar question turned out to be this: at what point do you stop trying?

At what point does is the pain and heartache and love and joy just not worth it any more?

When would all the negatives simply overwhelm the positives and cause me to walk away from the best thing that had ever happened to me? That ever happened to Bella?

And more importantly … had I reached that limit?

I searched deep within myself and the answer was staring me right in the face.

And it broke my heart.

"I can't do this anymore," I whispered.

Bella froze in her uneven strides and a pain greater than any I had seen in her filled her face and her eyes and her whole body. I could see it take over her, consume her. Ruin her.

This would not be easy.

Not for either of this.

"Don't," she murmured just barely loud enough for me to hear.

"I can't," I answered, my voice painfully unsteady even to my own ears.

Bella's mouth fell open, but nothing came out.

She had no response to any of this. No plea to make me stay. No sweet talk. No lies or tales or convincing.

Just one single word that I could barely listen to.

I had to get out of there as quickly as I could. Get away from this crap and this mess and everything that was weighing us down and keeping us from soaring into the heavens.

I'd reached my limit.

No more bullshit.

Bella sat down on the edge of the bed and I could tell a quiet numbness was quickly overtaking her.

I moved quickly, throwing whatever I could find of mine into my backpack. I found my laundry bag and shoved clothes and shoes and other various things into it roughly. This was not a moving out kind of thing. This was an exodus.

This was an "I need to cut my losses and get out while I'm still sane" thing.

"Don't you fucking dare," Bella hissed out and I turned to look at her.

There was a new rage there. A new fire. I knew what she was doing. She was deflecting. Covering up the pain with the anger.

I can't say I blamed her.

"I'll dare. I'll fucking dare. That little head of yours is convoluting everything. If you stopped and thought for one second about me, about how I feel, you'd see that maybe not everything is always cut in stone. Maybe you're just ignoring the real best thing that has ever happened to you. I gave you everything, Bella. But still you wanted more," I said and continued to shove clothing in my laundry bag before stopping and turning back to her.

"I can't be her. All you're doing is looking to fill the void she left in your life. This Elizabeth. You need to do some real soul searching. Look at what you have and what you're losing. What I was giving you. A real chance for change. A real chance for happiness. And yet you're wasting it. You threw it all away and I won't come groveling back asking for more. I'm not one of these weak-kneed saplings you've picked up before. I'm better than that and you know it. So you have to live with that knowledge now," I continued.

I threw my backpack on over my shoulders and hauled the laundry bag into my arms. Anything that I missed wasn't worth it. I would leave behind anything just to get out of there quickly.

Bella stayed sitting on the bed as I moved towards the door.

I don't know if I was expecting her to stop me, but she didn't.

That spoke volumes.

I swung the door open and took one last look at her.

"Goodbye, Bella," I said brusquely and shut the door behind me.

The greatest lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

I had been lying to myself all along.

Maybe I hadn't been different at all.

I was back at my door when I realized that I was indeed different than all of Bella's previous girls.

She hadn't kicked me out.

I had left on my own terms.

*ducks for cover*